WHAT ARE SELF-REPORTS?

The self-report is the most widely-used method in the psychologist's toolkit because it gathers information from large numbers of participants.

Self-reports are opposed to observations.

Self-reports get information direct from the participants about their behaviour or thoughts; observations are the researchers' interpretations of what the participants are doing or thinking

There are two types of self-reports:

Interviews

Questionnaires (surveys)

The Edexcel Specification uses the term "self-report" as well as interviews and questionnaires - it's helpful to group them together and contrast them with observations.

Self-reports are non-experimental in design - they describe but they don't point towards causes. However, they are often used as part of an experimental design as a way of gathering information about the independent variable (IV) or of measuring the dependent variable (DV).

INTERVIEWS

Interviews are usually face-to-face conversations (although they can take place over a telephone or over social media).

What makes an interview different from a questionnaire is that the interviewer is contributing at the same time as the interviewee. This usually takes the form of the interviewer asking questions and the interviewee answering them - but sometimes the interviewee might ask questions or the interviewer might offer instructions, clarifications or responses of their own.

Unstructured interviews are apparently informal chats - but there's still a purpose behind them. Unstructured interviews put the interviewee at ease and produce natural responses (i.e. they are valid) but no two unstructured interviews will be exactly the same (i.e. they are not reliable). The big advantage is that the interviewer can stop and pursue an interesting line of conversation or go back over questions that weren't answered clearly.

Structured interviews have pre-determined questions - they don't sound or feel much like a normal conversation. Structured interviews always feature the same questions in the same order (i.e. they are reliable) but they are stilted and unnatural (i.e. low in validity). The main advantage is that lots of participants can be interviewed this way and their responses easily compared.

Semi-structured interviews contain pre-determined questions but also feature informal chat - they sound and feel more realistic than structured interviews. They aim to get "the best of both worlds" (the validity of unstructured interviews and the reliability of structured interviews) but they are difficult to do: the interviewer has to be well-trained or quite experienced.

Interviews are often recorded (either audio-only or filmed). They can be transcribed (written down) later and analysed in detail.

Unstructured interviews: not always obvious who is the interviewer and who is the interviewee

Structured interviews: the questions are fixed in advance and only certain responses are allowed (even if you try to talk about something else)

Semi-structured interviews: there are some questions that must be asked, but room for natural conversation as well

You'll notice that all interviews suffer from researcher effects: the researcher might give directions to some interviewees through tone or body language or else the interviewees might feel hostile towards or intimidated by some researchers.

QUESTIONNAIRES (Surveys)

Questionnaires aren't conducted face-to-face; even if the researcher is present, they don't communicate with the respondent while they're completing the questionnaire (except perhaps to explain the purpose). Questionnaires involve reading the questions followed by a written response - although the writing might be no more than ticking boxes.

Unlike interviews, questionnaires are always structured - the questions have to be written in advance. However, there are different types of question that can be asked:

Open questions allow the respondent to answer in any way they like. The best open questions encourage longer answers and begin with words like "How" and "Why" - questions beginning with "What" and "When" tend to produce limited answers. The advantage is that the respondent doesn't have to feel restricted about how they answer, but it can be very difficult to score or compare the qualitative data you get from open questions.

Closed questions only allow an answer from a list of responses. The simplest type of closed question is a "Yes/No" question. More complicated closed questions can be multiple-choice questions. It's easy to score closed questions as quantitative data, because the researcher knows all the possible answers in advance. The problem is that the respondent might want to give an answer that isn't among the options provided (like "Sometimes" or "It Depends").

There are different types of closed question:

MULTIPLE CHOICE

This produces nominal level data - you get the frequency that each option was ticked, which you can express as percentages. The problem is that you might forget to include an option (where's BBQ chicken???)

Ever wanted to add a category of your own?

RANKED SCALE

This produces interval/ratio level data - you can give each respondent their own score. The classic "on a scale of 1-10" question tends to bunch in the middle (no one chooses 1 or 10) and it doesn't tell you what each number means - just how bad is 1? how great is 10? Some rating scales disguise the scores, like this:

You don't see the numbers on the question, but it's still a 1-5 scale.

LIKERT SCALE

Invented by Rensis Likert (pronounced Lick-hurt), a Likert scale offers a statement (not a question) and the respondent indicates how strongly they agree or disagree. This produces a 1-5 (or 1-7 if you add "Very Strongly...") rating scale, so it can be turned into either nominal or interval/ratio level data.

Some researchers prefer to remove the "Undecided" option - forcing respondents to agree or disagree.

Similar to a Likert scale, this invites respondents to indicate where their attitude falls between two extremes. The middle option scores "0" and placing yourself to the left or right scores -1, -2 or +1, +2, etc. The scoring can be hidden from the respondents. Normally there are several different scales to fill in, expressing different extremes. This can produce nominal level data (the frequency of positive or negative responses) or interval/ratio level data (if every respondent gets a total score).

You can turn a semantic differential scale into a graph by connecting the responses (or the mean or mode of all the responses) with a line.

You will have spotted a limitation of questionnaires: only people who can read and write can complete them. If the questionnaires contain complicated language, you might have to be quite educated to complete them properly.

APPLYING SELF-REPORT METHODS IN PSYCHOLOGYAO2

Questionnaires are more common than interviews in most branches of psychology, because large numbers of respondents can fill in a questionnaire at the same time and the researcher doesn't need any particular skill or training to supervise the completion of a questionnaire. However, socially-sensitive research may require an interview instead, because a questionnaire can be cold and disrespectful.

A particular type of questionnaire used by psychologists is the psychometric test. This is a questionnaire which produces a score to measure a psychological characteristic. A common example is the IQ Test.

Psychometric tests produce quantitative data and often measure several different things at once, like different personality traits.

Another popular psychometric test on social media. I'm Rapunzel, by the way...

A different approach is a projective test. This is more like an interview technique than a questionnaire, because the respondent either describes an image or draws an image of their own. The researcher then interprets what the respondent comes up with. A good example is the Rorschach Test, otherwise known as the "inkblot test". What you think the inkblots look like reveals your inner character. This produces qualitative data and is inspired by Freud's psychodynamic theory.

RESEARCHER EFFECTS

The Specification makes a point of directing students to know about researcher effects

Researcher effects are influences that spoil the outcome of the self-report process. They do this because the respondent is actually reacting to some characteristic of the researcher (their appearance, body language or tone) rather than the question itself.

Researcher effects may make self-reports unreliable if some respondents react to some researcher effects and others don't

Researcher effects may make self-reports invalid if respondents end up giving answers that aren't true because of the influence of the researcher

The most obvious type of researcher effect is the leading question or helpful body language or tone. A researcher can hint at the answer they are looking for. Some researchers don't even realise they are doing this. A solution is the double-blind technique where the person asking the questions doesn't know the true purpose of the research and can't help the respondents out.

More subtle researcher effects happen when the researcher is attractive or intimidating. Particularly with sensitive topics, this might encourage some participants to be more forthcoming (or exaggerate the truth) and inhibit others, who feel shy or frightened. A solution is to match the researcher to the respondent in terms of age, sex and race.

Interviews suffer from researcher effects more than questionnaires, but this problem affects questionnaires too, especially if the researcher is present when the questionnaire is being filled out. Postal surveys and online questionnaires remove that problem, but there's still a type of researcher effect from just knowing that the survey comes from somewhere prestigious (like a top university) or somewhere that isn't respected (like a political party you don't agree with). This information can be hidden too - but then there are ethical problems with not letting people know whom they are giving their data to.

Schmolck et al. (2002) asked the participants to complete memory tests and interviewed them about their thoughts at the same time. This was an unstructured interview. It was recorded and scored by 14 raters for language problems.

Sherif et al. (1954)used psychometric tests to measure the boys' feelings about their friends, their group and the boys in the other group. He also used unstructured interviews to get the boys to talk about their attitudes and he secretly recorded some of these talks.

SELF-REPORTS IN UNIT 2

Clinical Interviews

A clinical interview is a special type of interview made by a medical practitioner (like a doctor or psychiatrist) to assess someone's health. A psychologist might use this to determine if someone is suffering from a mental disorder. This sort of interview is semi-structured, using a lot of open questions. It is designed to get as much (relevant) information from the client as possible to help with diagnosis.

Brown et al. (1986) used semi-structured interviews to find out about symptoms of depression, self-esteem, social support and stressful life events

The Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-5 (SCID-5) is a semi-structured interview guide for making DSM-5 diagnoses. PRIME-MD is another checklist, which led to the PHQ (below).

Often the interviewer will complete a checklist after (or during) the interview, to give the client a score for certain mental health characteristics.

This is a 21-question psychometric test that asks about cognitions (hopelessness, irritability, guilt or feelings of being punished) as well as physical symptoms such as fatigue, weight loss, and lack of interest in sex. Each question is multiple-choice, with 4 answers to choose from. These are rated 0 to 3 and the overall score is out of 63.

BDI gives a quantitative score to negative cognitions and lets psychologists statistically analyse depression (such as whether a group of people are responding to treatment). However, turning mood into a score out of 63 is very reductionist.

This is a 8-question psychometric test that asks about cognitions (feeling down, feeling like a failure, inability to concentrate)) as well as physical symptoms such as fatigue, sleep problems and poor appetite. Each question is multiple-choice, with 4 answers to choose from. These are rated 0 to 3 and the overall score is out of 24.

PHQ-8 also gives a quantitative score to negative cognitions and lets psychologists statistically analyse depression. It is shorter and quicker to complete than BDI. Turning mood into a score out of 24 is very reductionist.

EVALUATING SELF-REPORT METHODS IN PSYCHOLOGYAO3

There are some strengths and weaknesses common to all self-reports:

Generalisability

A large sample group doesn't guarantee a truly representative sample. However, the larger the sample the easier it is to make it representative, by screening out anomalies and including more types of people.

Questionnaires can include very large samples if they are postal or Internet surveys.

However, response rates for these are very low, even when there are incentives to return them (a free pen! entry into a raffle!) because they get discarded as junk mail or spam. The groups excluded by low response rates tend to be the people who are under-represented in psychological research anyway (the homeless, people with unstable lifestyles, criminals, the very rich or the very poor).

Interviews tend to exclude participants who feel uncomfortable sharing information with the researcher (because of prejudiced attitudes or because they are criminals). Questionnaires tend to exclude people with poor literacy skills, who can't understand the questions or express themselves in writing. Both types of self-report exclude people who speak a different language, although translators can help here (Becker used Fijian translators with her participants).

Reliability

Reliability is achieved by standardised procedures - making sure everyone gets asked the same questions, worded the same way, in the same order.

The more structured an interview is, the more reliable it is. Interviews also become more reliable when the interviewers are trained to ask questions in the same way and the interview can be repeated by a second interviewer (test-retest reliability). If the interview is recorded, it can be checked by other raters (inter-rater reliability); Schmolck did this with her brain-damaged patients to study speech problems they might have.

Questionnaires are more reliable than interviews because the questions are written down in advance. This makes it easy for different raters to score the responses (inter-rater reliability) or get respondents to complete a second questionnaire (test-retest reliability).

Applications

See the section above on applying self-reports in psychology.

Validity

There are many reasons why participants might not give accurate or truthful answers in a self-report.

Demand characteristics is when the participant figures out (or thinks they have figured out) the purpose of the research and gives the answers they think the researcher is looking for.

A solution to this is to conceal the purpose of the research. Self-reports often contain distractor questions that aren't scored. These irrelevant questions make the purpose of the research less obvious.

Social desirability bias (and it's opposite, the "screw you!" effect described by Phil Banyard) is when the participants let themselves be influenced by the social situation they are in, wanting to impress or alienate the researcher.

A solution to this is to add lie questions. A classic lie question is "Have you ever in your life been late for an appointment?" - since everybody has been late, even through no fault of their own, anyone who answers "No" is lying. Lie questions can be scored to give a lie scale that shows how trustworthy the respondent is. Respondents scoring above a limit might be removed

Someone who "strongly agrees" with liking their friends and disliking their friends is not answering truthfully (or has complicated relationships...)

Interviews have a third validity problem which is researcher effects. This is when the researcher influences the answers given. This could be deliberate (through encouragement or body language) or accidentally (if people are attractive or hostile). Training interviewers reduces this, but adds to the time and expense of the research. Repeating the interview with a different interviewer might reduce this. Researchers often try to make sure the researcher is the same sex and race as the interviewee.

Finally, there are participant variables. Respondents who are articulate (able to speak clearly) will give a lot more quality information in interviews; literate people who can write well will respond to questionnaires (especially with open questions) at length. People who speak a different language or have a dialect that is different from the researcher might not understand the questions - or the researcher might not understand their answers. This is a problem with cross-cultural studies. Interviews can get round this if they are at least semi-structured because the interviewer could rephrase a question or ask the interviewee to clarify their answer.

Ethical researchers show Respect for privacy and dignity. This involves keeping the responses to self-reports confidential: the respondents are not identified by name and cannot be linked back to their data.

To have Integrity, self-reports should be transparent. This means the respondents should not be deceived. Sometimes, this goes against using lie questions or distractor questions to ensure validity. To maintain Integrity, it's good practice to debrief respondents after they have finished the self-report. If they wish, they can have their data removed from the research.

Social Responsibility means making it clear what the self-report is for. Again, debriefing can be used if the validity of the research would be ruined by explaining the self-reports purpose at the start. Some self-reports resemble (or actually are) clinical diagnostic tools. In order to be competent, it's very important researchers make it clear when they are not psychiatristsso that respondents don't believe the self-report has diagnosed them with a real mental condition.

Self-reports don't usually cause Harm, but researchers need to be aware of two concerns if the research is socially-sensitive. First, questions may cause embarrassment or offence (once again, interviews are more ethical here, because the interviewer can rephrase the question if the interviewee is uncomfortable). Second, when surveys are published, the findings can be damaging to vulnerable groups, especially if they inflame prejudice against minorities or add to stereotypes.

EXEMPLAR ESSAYHow to write a 12-mark answer

Evaluate and apply the use of self-reports in the social and learning approaches (12 marks)

A 12-mark “evaluate and apply” question awards 4 marks for describing the self-report method (AO1), 4 marks for applying this method to the two approaches (AO2) and 4 marks for evaluating its use in the two approaches (AO3). You need a conclusion to get a mark in the top band (10-12 marks). Interviews turn up in the Specification for the Clinical and Criminalogical Applications as well.

DescriptionOne type of self-report is the interview, which is a one-to-one conversation to gather information on a topic.Semi-structured interviews contain a mixture of questions that have been prepared in advance and normal conversation.Another type of self-report is the questionnaire, which gets written responses from a large group of respondents who read then answer the questions.Psychometric tests are questionnaires that produce quantitative data to give a score to a psychological characteristic like personality.

ApplicationAn example semi-structured interviews is when Becker et al. interviewed Fijian schoolgirls about their attitudes to TV, dieting and their aspirations.Becker was able to use translators in case the girls would rather answer in Fijian instead of English.Psychometric tests can be used to see if personality traits are a factor in things like memory, prejudice or obedience.An example is when Burger asked his participants to complete the 20 questions in the Desirability of Control Scale to see if they were motivated by a need to be in control of situations. Those who scored highly were less likely to obey.

EvaluationSelf-reports give us information about what a person is thinking and feeling, including their motives. This is much more valid than just observing their behaviour.Both the social and learning approach benefit from this. Becker could understand why the girls were changing their attitudes to eating by getting their views on TV and Burger concludes that needing to be in control is why some people resist authority.However, self-reports can be invalid if the answers aren't truthful. This could be due to socially-sensitive topics.Questionnaires can cause offence with questions on sensitive topics. Interviews allow the interviewer to be more respectful of feelings. For example, Becker used Fijian translators when asking the girls about their feelings about their bodies..

ConclusionSocial and learning approaches both study sensitive issues where interviews might be better than questionnaires in terms of getting valid answers.

Notice that for a 12-mark answer you don’t have to include everything about self-reports. I haven’t mentioned unstructured interviews or reliability issues. But it is a balanced answer - third description, third application, third evaluation.